Liar

Clove

I was lied too.

Love doesn't always win.

The myths always say that the power of love will always prevail. That was a lie.

I died because I loved. I died because I wasn't loved. I died because of love. I died.

From the moment I was born it seemed I was born to be the spare, the replacement, and I think that's why my older sister, Amaryllis, always seemed to resent me. That didn't stop me from loving her. However, it seemed I loved her too much for my own good.

I don't regret it. Even in death, I can't bring myself to hate them. Even after everything, they are were still my family even if I was never theirs.

Even if they are the reason I'm dead. No I shouldn't say that. It was my own fault I should've given up when I had the chance. Maybe then I could've lived past 15 and run away to mystical land where I could be free and never have to worry about a thing like the heroines in fairytales.

Fairytales - a story told to little children

My illness, the cause of my death, was thought to be a fairytale. It was only ever heard of in stories.

It was called Hanahaki.

Hanahaki, a fatal disease that makes you cough up flowers. At first a single petal that soon transcends into whole flowers to bouquets until you die.

It is caused by unrequited love but not just any kind of unrequited love it had to be pure. A love so pure that you would give up everything for them one including your own life even if they don't love you back. Hanahaki can be caused by both platonic and romantic love. There is no cure for this ailment but your beloved reciprocating at least an ounce of your love. Or giving up on your love.

I suppose the symptoms of hanahaki are somewhat like a sick sort of metaphor: A sense of love so beautiful, so pure, manifesting into something just as beautiful but in the end being rejected by our bodies and thrown away. Discarded. Forgotten. Hurt. But it doesn't stop it from growing back. It grows and it grows, and it grows until it suffocates you.

That is the nature of hanahaki

There is a reason there is no cure for such a miserable disease and that is because the cases of this disease are so far and few between, so few cases have been reported that some considered it a myth, an old wives tale yet there i was at the young age of 15 coughing up my first daffodil petal. Honestly looking back I'm surprised I didn't cough up one earlier.

I remember when the first petal fell. I was covered in my own blood; I was crying in my bathroom yet do you know what my first thought was? "How beautiful," that was my first thought. I laugh a lot now looking back at my old self. That's something I never used to do before. Truly I was a foolish naïve girl and perhaps I still am.

I remember crying a lot back then. Up until that point I had always thought, well hoped at the very least, that a small part of them had loved me but that petal, that single petal crushed that silly little fantasy of mine. Still, I couldn't bring myself to believe it.

They say there are 5 stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.
I had wasted my short fifteen years of life living in denial. And even now in the afterlife, I still can't reach acceptance.

I do not know why they did not love me: my mother, father and sister. I did everything I could to earn their love but yet nothing I did was ever good enough.

I remember a point in time however in which my, father did love me. It was a very short period of my life, but it was my favourite period.

He used to take me on walks through the garden pointing out flowers and telling me the meanings. He would always tell me I was named after this flower bud that grew on trees, Clove, he told me it meant undying love. How ironic is it not?